The headlines in Indian newspapers have been mildly confusing in the recent past. They've been hogged by Manoj Prabhakar, a former Indian cricket all-rounder, and by V Prabhakaran, the supremo of the terrorist organisation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
They've displayed much in common though operating in their own fields. Prabhakar has been terrorising virtually everyone associated with Indian cricket with his yorkers in the form of spy cameras capturing India's cricketing establishment degrading itself. Prabhakaran has been functioning from North Sri Lanka, where his troops have caused much grief to the Sri Lankan Army.
Prabhakaran's utility to this article remains limited to just that coincidence. Prabhakhar, however, remains the significant point.
Prabhakar has made his accusations and has tricked others in making many more. However, even as television studios get jammed with experts mouthing off on the impact of the revelations and the future of Indian cricket and newspaper headlines get close to libel each day, some pertinent questions may have been inadvertently left out amid all that investigative ferment.
The first is that if some players are actually proven guilty, what penalty do they suffer? The second, can action actually be taken against them? The third, obviously, by whom?
The first refuses to yield easy answers. If a player is found guilty and arrested and thereafter prosecuted by the police, he can be charged under sections in the Indian Penal Code relating to cheating or fraud. Applying this proviso would have every cricket fan litigating against every player over the last decade for impersonating cricketers courtesy their ridiculous antics on the field (fixed or otherwise). By the way, the maximum penalty the guilty (if so proven) can attract is Rs 5000. Since most players, as the reports go, have benefited in crores, that would be scant punishment in monetary terms.
The second issue is of acting against these players. The Central Bureau of Investigation is looking into the matter and going by its track record, they'll probably never gather enough evidence for any judge to take the findings seriously. Thus, it can be predicted, after a flurry of sensational leaks, publicised raids and high profile arrests, the investigation would progress over a decade or so by when either the game will be dead or nobody will really care. What are the options? Have the Income Tax Department figure out whether the declared earnings of the players are even close to their assets. Or have the Foreign Exchange Regulatory Authority check out their earnings. Or as one senior official (and our columnist) has said, go into their declaration under the Voluntary Declaration of Income Scheme (VDIS). The VDIS was introduced to net black money and the catch there is that it is supposed to be secret. As for the IT Department, it enjoys the dubious distinction of never having gone into the accounts of any cricketers. Film starts, yes; businessmen, yes; your ordinary taxpayer, yes; but never the flannelled lot.
Question three has already been answered. Now, given the fact that none of these measures seem adequate in tackling match fixing in the Indian context, what could be the final resolution? Nothing, obviously, other than boosting the visits to websites, upping newspaper and magazine circulations and increasing viewership of TV news programmes.
As for the cricket fan, his options include switching off the TV, chucking the sports page and throwing up his hands. Or just watching the matches as he has done in the past, suspicious of every move his heroes make on the field.